18 January 2015

Sermon:The Confession of St. Peter (Psalm)

Summary: The Church has long celebrated Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God. This Psalm confesses God’s salvation of His people — a salvation that was completed by Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection.

The text praises the gates of the temple, for they open to allow the Lord’s people to enter. Yet it is also used as part of the committal rite in many Christian burials. It reminds us that death and grave are also a gate opening into eternal life.

And so we use this Psalm today. Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ. Because he is, He leads His sheep through the gates of death and grave into His eternal presence. The gates may close behind us but they open before us into the joys of life everlasting

Text: Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.

This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.

I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord.

The Lord is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords, up to the horns of the altar!

You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God; I will extol you.

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! Psalm 118:19-29

NB: For some reason, a few people have had problems trying to play the inline audio if Windows Media is their default MP3 player. If this occurs, you can either change to QuickTime or another default browser player, copy and paste the link directly into a selected player, or download it to your computer, where it seems to work regardless of which player. Several folks have suggested VLC Player from VideoLAN.